Performing Honestly
I have never been the best at being in love. I have always had a disproportionate reaction to it, convinced that if someone showed me the tiniest bit of affection then that was it. I was done. I guess I use to suffer from a disease known as “severe romanticism.” It’s like consumption but not as retro. It basically meant every few months I was overcome with a feverish desire to do nothing but stare into someone’s eyes, write bad poetry about their butt crack, and listen to non-stop Bright Eyes. This alone would have been fine, annoying and scary, but fine — however when combined with some mammoth father issues, it resulted in a ten year run of dramatic (albeit often brief) relationships.
In short, my love life use to be a horrific mess with a really high turnaround.
Perfect fodder for comedy really.
That’s why, when I had the chance to perform at a Valentine’s Themed comedy night, I lept at the opportunity. I had five minutes to do whatever I wanted on the subject of love! But I had so much material! I decided to read out an open letter to everyone I had ever been in love/lust with. Finally, the chance to exorcise some demons, to air my dirty laundry, to name and shame the men who had sneakily tried to bum me (JK but also not JK). The list started with my first boyfriend. I told the crowd I loved him because he wore Hawaiian shirts and grew out his sideburns for me, which made him look like Wolverine. And he told me I looked just like his favourite pop crush Christina Aguilera, which is correct because I totally do. We lost our v cards to each other, and although he didn’t seal the deal (ejaculate) I still did three pregnancy tests the next day, because that’s the kind of thing grown-ups do, and I was officially a grown up. But then his sideburns got unruly and so I left him for someone else. (The leaving someone for someone else was a recurrent theme in the letter, and did I mention that I use to be like, the worst?). The list had a happy ending though, finishing with with my current partner, whom I thanked for not attempting to bum me when my guard was down. He wasn’t there to receive this wonderful compliment, but he assures me he will add it to his CV at some point.
Needless to say, it was quite the epic list.
It was all pretty absurd and tongue in cheek, reflective of my changing notions of what constituted love, and it emphasised in a comedic fashion (or so I thought) my naive belief that my life could only be validated by boys who came in/on me. But don’t worry guys, I have much better judgement now. My misguided romantic inclinations have been soothed out of me with a combination of therapy and the wisdom that comes with ageing and enjoying a nice sit down rather more than arguing with a drug addicted boyfriend about when is the appropriate length of time to stay in a strip club, in Amarillo. Even if I was currently single I would like to think that I had learned enough over the years to give myself self validation (masturbation).
Anyway, I decided it would be a humorous thing to read out, especially as you think it ends, and then there’s another boy. LOL.
After the show, full of post gig adrenaline and wine, I went to the toilets and was approached by a woman who ever so sincerely told me that whilst my performance was funny, I did realise that was a lot of people? Right? Drunk, and a little confused I didn’t respond. I thought maybe she was joking, we were just girls of a similar age in a liberal city having a liberal laugh at my past failings, but no. Her expression was sincere, her tone was patronising, her face was… a little blurry because of the wine. She was expecting an answer. I felt like I was being told off, so my ‘please like me’ instinct kicked in and I said, very eloquently due to my therapy years, ‘I use to mistake intimacy with sex a lot, so….’ I took a very apologetic tone. She seemed to accept that answer, nodded and we went on our merry ways.
But then it struck me. She had retroactively shamed me for my emotional sluttiness, intentionally or not, and I had immediately tried to make an excuse for my past behaviour and distance myself from it. I should have said ‘I know right!’ and then done the dance from who runs the world, girls, YEAH! But instead I wanted her to know that I heard her, and yes, she was right, it was a lot. I entered the shame spiral, shame at myself for my reaction and shame at myself for reading out the list. I hate the shame spiral.
(Although the joke is on her because you know, that list wasn’t even ALL of them!)
I get that this girl might have actually been concerned about me, thought I was reading this list as a cry for help, or as a dramatic monologue rather than a comedy routine (isn’t all comedy a cry for help in a way? Discuss). Maybe she just thought it was nothing to be proud of, and I needed to realise that. But I am still annoyed at my own retraction — instantly separating myself from the more confident me who had just been on stage, and who thought her goal was to make people laugh by owning her own mistakes.
For me, my way to get over past shame and self hatred is to do just that and, well laugh about it, laugh at how far I have come, laugh because haven’t we all done some stupid stuff? Haven’t we all had some sex? Haven’t we all been young and dumb, fumbling our way through life, hurting people and being hurt and hopefully coming out the other side of it a little saner and wiser? And isn’t that sort of great?
I perform quite a bit in Bristol and I tend to talk about quite personal stuff, often raw, embarrassing and hopefully funny. Currently the kind of theatrical comedy I do would be labelled as comedy/tragedy BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I JUST LABELLED IT. I’m not funny enough to be a stand up and not avant garde enough to cry into a hollowed out watermelon and make the audience eat it, so we are one. But I do love oversharing on stage.
I think initially it was because I had so much regret over my past behaviour, and had tried to find a particular brand of performer who didn’t mind talking about their mistakes, because whenever I had been at my lowest, performers who made me feel like less of an arsehole saved my brain from exploding. People like Mike Birbiglia, who talks honestly about his fears of commitment in his stand up show ‘Sleepwalk With Me.’ He says how these fears lead to him cheating on his fiancé. It can’t be an easy thing to admit, I don’t imagine many people told him after the show that he was a bad person for it. It wasn’t cool. They got it. We all get scared and act like the fallible humans we are, desperate for a quick way out, desperate for a distraction, and that’s totally okay. I attempt to do something similar, give something back to the shame community, coz I am super charitable like that. And you don’t go to see performers give you the Facebook update of their lives, telling you how fabulous and glamorous they are, how they FINALLY achieved that thigh gap, got that promotion and found that cursed crystal in the nebular quadrant of the blorgon sector.
IRL I am a far more reserved and insular people pleaser, bowing and scraping for compliments so the stage is where I feel most comfortable spilling my guts. It feels strangely anonymous, and at the same time a safe space.
FYI This is not the first time someone has questioned my performance content, I did a show about Star Trek at the fringe in 2015 (which was really about my relationship with my dad) and I had a bunch of pissed off Trekkies tell me off for the way I described the borg. Needless to say, I gave no shits.
It’s taken me a few months to process this experience, but the more I share this story with people, the more I wish i had just said ‘And?’ to her.
But my point is, I don’t think women should ever be ashamed of their number when it comes to who they have been in love or lust with. And they shouldn’t be ashamed to talk about it, if they so choose. I certainly don’t think there is anything wrong with the fact that I have loved/luved and lost many many times. I know some people meet someone at 16 and decide ‘you, for the rest of your life.’ And maybe that’s what happened to that girl. She met her lobster at a young age and it all came up Milhouse for her. But I didn’t do that, I didn’t have the necessary emotional equipment to fall in love with someone and stay in love with them, I changed, my partners changed and sometimes I just dated awful people and sometimes I was just a massive dickhead. I know it’s a lot of people, but I can honestly say I don’t care. I learnt something from all of them. Like don’t date meth addicts from Amarillo.
The comment from this girl has now reinforced my mantra (after I clawed my way of the shame cycle), that I will always try and be as honest as possible on stage. That I would happily tell you all the stupid stuff I have done again and again, and you can judge me all you want, but don’t feel sorry for me because I wouldn’t change a thing. All you are doing is making someone else who has had a lot of relationships think that it is not okay. And it is. Because maybe you just like hooking up with interesting people, maybe you are a spy and must contractually fall in love every six months or so for plot reasons, who cares? Your number can be 3, it can be 300, as long as it makes you happy, then good for you.
